This invention relates to surveillance systems and, in particular, to a method of and apparatus for searching recorded video in a video surveillance system.
Video surveillance systems normally include a recorder for recording the video captured by the surveillance cameras. Initially, videocassette recorders were used for recording this data; however, the tapes could only be searched by having personnel review the tapes to find the portion of interest. This process was extremely time consuming and labor intensive. The development of digital video recorders improved the searching process with the use of algorithms to search for specific items, such as when an item has disappeared from the area being viewed by the video camera. However, the ability to quickly and easily find a specific video clip has not significantly improved; the process still requires personnel to review the video as with VCR tapes. Accordingly, there has been a long felt need in the art for a system and method of quickly searching through recorded video data to locate the video of interest.